Carolyn Aronson

Carolyn Aronson knows the beauty business from the salon chair up. She started working in salons at 16 and spent years seeing what clients needed before putting $80,000 into an idea of her own. The result was It’s a 10 Haircare, launched from her home in 2006 with a simple premise: one product should be able to do more.

Its Miracle Leave-In became the brand’s signature and now sells more than 11 million bottles annually in the United States. The company reports $500 million in annual sales, and Aronson has built it without outside investors.

Keeping control required a major gamble. Aronson took out a loan to buy out her co-founder in January 2017, becoming the company’s sole owner. One month later, It’s a 10 became the first independent haircare brand to advertise during the Super Bowl.

© Thaddaeus McAdams

Her identity has its own unexpected history. Aronson spent her first years in foster care before being adopted. At 26, she found her biological family and learned that her mother was Puerto Rican and that she was the 11th of 12 children. She now speaks proudly about her place as a Latina founder and sole owner of a professional haircare company operating at a global scale.

The business looks very different as It’s a 10 celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2026. Aronson has named Khloé Kardashian its first global ambassador and is introducing a rebrand across approximately 80 products this October. The brand now reaches 140 countries.

She has also been building a larger beauty portfolio. Recently, she launched Cloud Haircare, which has now expanded to more than 7,000 U.S. retail locations, and F.A.S.T. Haircare has reached more than 5,000. In addition, she created a men’s grooming company, Rewind It 10, co-founded with Jeff Aronson and Fat Joe, with DJ Khaled joining as a global ambassador in 2026. ARISE, another haircare brand, is expected this fall.

Aronson was also named to Inc.’s 2026 Female Founders 500, while another milestone will put her story into her own words. On January 19, 2027, she will release her first book, Lift, Hold, Shine: How I Built a Billion-Dollar Beauty Empire One Strand at a Time, tracing the unlikely route from foster care and hairstyling to the company she leads today.

Twenty years after betting on a leave-in conditioner, Aronson is still deciding where the business goes next. This time, she has far more than one bottle to work with.